Skin-Aging Mistakes, The Skin Microbiome, & Science-Based Secrets to Youthful Skin

26:49And I get it. As a child, I struggle with skin issues and I have very fickle skin. So over the years, I've had just about every skin issue. But as a child, I had eczema and I had little bumps on my face and I was so embarrassed by my skin. I didn't feel like a normal kid. And so I really get the impact it can have psychologically and how when you're suffering with it, when you're struggling with it, you're willing to do anything to get rid of it. And if you hear from one of your friends, you know, in high school or, you know, something, oh, I got, mine cleared up because I went on birth control pills or the doctor says, yeah, this, this will get rid of it right away.

27:30You just want to jump at it. You don't even think about what's going to be the long-term consequence of this.

27:35Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. Oh man. And this is also bringing up, so I mentioned our skin being an extension of our nervous system for us to really get in touch with the fact that your thoughts, your level of stress, these things are going to affect your skin quality as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. We get caught in this vicious cycle of skin stressing us out, but then stress actually can make skin issues worse. So when we're stressed out, our adrenal hormone cortisol kicks in and with an increase in cortisol, that can worsen inflammatory skin conditions, including acne, eczema, rosacea, some of the most common, psoriasis, some of the most common skin conditions can get worse by high stress.

28:22So it's really important as part of the plan, if you're when you're looking at more of a holistic approach to skin, to include mindset, stress management practices as part of treatment.

28:36Shawn Stevenson:Wow. Yeah. I think a person or you know 20 000 can identify like stressful conditions bringing about issues with their skin right but then there's like some overarching uh like even expressions of viral things like herpes virus or like shingles from stress right manifesting through the skin so again we might tie it to that cognitively but even if we're talking about breakouts and the like our mood is going to affect our outer appearance. And so I want to ask you about what are some of the things, just, you know, simple things that we could use for our skin health. Because of course, we've talked a little bit internally, and we'll get more into food in a little bit.

29:23Shawn Stevenson:But what about the topical treatments, right? So what about things like one ingredient, coconut oil, for example? Okay, so coconut oil is an interesting one, because it's natural, It's a great oil. Some people have a hard time using straight coconut oil, especially people who are more acne prone. But we use coconut oil in the Spa Doctors My Skin Care line, but we do it with other ingredients in it to help it be a great balanced formulation. So just using coconut oil by itself may not be the best thing, especially for people's faces. But there are a lot of really great natural ingredients out there.

30:07And one of the biggest things I don't know that people know about is that going back to the pH of our skin. And that a lot of the products that we use have a high pH. So a pH over 5.5 is actually going to be damaging for our skin. and even water has a pH of 7 and that's neutral. So to help really support our skin, the health of our skin, we want skincare products ideally in the 4.6 to 5 pH range, especially for our face. And the research shows that that's the sort of the magic, that sweet spot for our skin to help it with a skin microbiome to keep it from breaking out, from aging faster than it should, all of those things.

30:51So that's one of the biggest things. And a simple thing people can do is actually test the pH of their skincare products. You could just get pH strips and check and see what it is. And if it's over 5.5, or even if it's too acidic, it could be damaging. So we just, you know, that's one of the big things. And then another big thing about skincare products is I I know a lot of companies are now making natural or hypoallergenic skin care products or they put contains CoQ10 or contains green tea on the label. I think it's really important for people to know that there's a lack of regulations when it comes to what people, manufacturers can put on the label.

31:38The words natural and hypoallergenic have no regulation around them. So anybody can call their product natural. Anyone can call their product hypoallergenic. So that's not enough. You have to turn it over, look at the ingredients and see, does it contain synthetic fragrance? Because fragrance is loaded with hormone disrupting chemicals. These endocrine disrupting chemicals, hormone disrupting chemicals, have been connected to problems with infertility, thyroid disease, obesity, early puberty, issues with menopause, breast cancer, prostate cancer, a number. Really, if you think about anything having to do with our hormones, it could potentially disrupt those, disrupt them because hormone disrupting chemicals, they bind hormone receptors in the body and the body thinks that it's getting a hormone.

32:37And so it acts differently. And so we really want to reduce our exposure to those. So just because it says natural on the label doesn't mean that it actually is clean and non-toxic. I feel like when it comes to skincare, two of the biggest mistakes people make in their routine, not even like talking about the ingredients and all the toxins, but cleansing and exfoliating. Those are two of the biggest mistakes people make. The cleansing we kind of talked about already, they over-cleanse and they strip the skin of the natural oils. But similar kind of thing with exfoliation, a lot of women are thinking, oh, I need to exfoliate every day with these big brushes and harsh exfoliants.

33:22They're just like, the more I scrub, the better. My skin's going to turn all red and that's good. But you have to remember, our skin microbiome can be kind of delicate. And these oils in our skin, the pH, all of that. So we don't want to overdo it. exfoliation is important but we want to be gentle with our scan so that's i just you know using some gentle exfoliation is really all you need okay so is there anything like you mentioned certain

33:51Shawn Stevenson:sponges for example like is there something for us to be aware of like what we're using to exfoliate with yeah so what i love to use is called a konjac sponge and it's spelled with a k k-o-n-j-a-c We sell them at the spa doctor store and they're actually a natural substance. They're biodegradable. And when you get them wet, they're really soft, but they still have some exfoliating properties to them. So they're still gentle, but they do the job. Got it. Got it. And you also have in here an herbal steam. Can you talk about that and what that will consist of? Yeah, absolutely. we um this is something that i just you know i think there's a lot of diy stuff people can do things at home and a lot of women really love doing these families love doing these and and so the the steam is you get you can either if you have the time of year is when it's more you have like fresh flowers and herbs you can do it with those or if it's in a time of year when you're looking at more in like fall and winter, you could use dried and put them in water and do a steam.

35:03And you can, you know, use these to really help with your skin. And it's just also just a really nice self-care practice.

35:13Shawn Stevenson:So how would we do a steam, for example, like somebody who is oblivious to how that would actually work? I've done like a steam where, you know, for, you know, to help if somebody has a cold, for example, like a kind of like a impromptu homemade sauna or sweat lodge, right? So you get a hot pot of water put in the middle of the floor, then have the person sit there, blanket over them. Yeah. And you can, I mean, you can do that. And it's really great for clearing the sinuses too, but it's also good for the skin. And so you can put flowers, fresh flower petals in there like calendula or rose petals you can do some essential oil drops and that can also just as you're doing that it steams your skin it helps kind of soften the skin make it more supple and hydrated so it's just a nice self-care practice you have a lot of great like diy do it yourself tips in here too, cleansers, steams, and masks.

36:18Shawn Stevenson:So what about masks? Let's talk about that. What are some of the kind of DIY stuff that we can do if we want to do a mask for our face? Yeah. And we can use a lot of things actually that we find in our kitchen. There are simple, natural ingredients that, hey, if you can eat it, you can put it on your skin and not have to worry so much about the toxicity, right? So things like honey or turmeric or even yogurt, maybe you don't want to eat, but you could put it on your skin. Even sugar is actually something that can be good in DIY skincare, but not so much internally for the skin. What about aloe?

36:56Shawn Stevenson:Aloe is one of the things over the years, randomly I'll do like an aloe mask. I usually get the aloe for like this certain drink that I make, but then I'll just like use what's on my hands and I'll just put on my face and just let it sit there for a while aloe is one of my favorite ingredients in skincare products and diy skincare we we use it in the spot doctor skincare products but the best thing is to have an aloe plant like you're saying just take the aloe plant leaf get that inside that gel and use it on the skin and a lot of people think of it for burns and scrapes which is really great for but it's also just extremely hydrating for the skin so you don't have to have a burn to put it on so just a little fun fact and people have to scroll so far back on my instagram page because this was back i my my old my youngest son was probably maybe two or three and he's about to turn 11 now so i put up a before and after he fell and he had this scrape on his face and we're just of course, were mortified, right?

38:03Shawn Stevenson:Just like your little face, you know? And we used alo and I had the before and after and it is miraculous. Like it was as if nothing had ever happened to him. And again, it's way, way back in the day. This is back when I barely use Instagram. So maybe I like post once a month or something like that. But if people want to check that out, maybe I'll try and wrestle it down and put it in the show notes for people to see. But it's a really special food. has been used for thousands of years, storied and scriptural references, all the things. So probably one of the most remarkable things about your book is you really dive in and talk about hormones.

38:42Shawn Stevenson:And it's such an important part of the equation is being educated about what's happening in our bodies, which we're so, again, externally focused. And so you talk about some of the most foundational hormones that we hear about, but we don't really understand and how they impact our expression of beauty and also our feeling tone of beauty. So let's talk about a couple of them. You mentioned earlier, you mentioned testosterone, right? We tend to think this is a male versus female scenario, but testosterone is important for everybody. Yeah. Testosterone is important for men and women, for everyone.

39:17So is estrogen. I think a lot of men think estrogen is not important for them, but hey, men have estrogen too. But of course, they're different and our hormones are different. Testosterone is really important for women to give us drive and also to not only sex drive, but also just overall drive for life and energy and building muscle tone. And as we age, our testosterone starts to decline. And for women who are on birth control pills, their testosterone is suppressed. So with low testosterone, women might start to notice they don't have the same level of energy, overall drive, their libido goes down, they might notice their muscle tone is lacking.

40:06And what's interesting is we forget sometimes there's actually muscles under the skin on our face. So if we lose muscle, we could be creating more sagging skin too so it's you know people notice it with their skin as well so testosterone is important we also don't want too much testosterone either the other side of that so what would happen with that is that women might start to develop acne they might start to develop like they might notice like these kind of rogue dark hairs showing up on their face or different places that they didn't expect it. So it's hormones are interesting. We want them working for us not against us.

40:49We want them in the right balance. And I remember one time recently someone asked me, but what does hormone balance really even mean? And it's a really good question because it's not like there's that, you know, like this point that you've arrived at hormonal balance and you're there. Our hormones change throughout the day, for women throughout the month, throughout our lives, throughout the seasons. And so it's this constant thing that we just need to be in flux with, but being aware of how they impact our health is really important. And I think most people don't realize how much hormones play a role in our health.

41:29And testosterone is certainly one, And a lot of people think of sex hormones like testosterone, but there's thyroid hormones, adrenal hormones, there's insulin, which helps with our blood sugar. We have leptin, ghrelin, that helps with our appetite. We have melatonin that helps with our sleep. We have so many hormones.

41:49Shawn Stevenson:Well, this leans right into something else I want to ask you about, which is, you know, we already discussed how our skin is really the outermost portion of what's happening internally. It's giving us this great feedback. Our skin is made from the food that we eat. What are some of your favorite beauty supportive foods? Yeah, absolutely. So we talked about some of the foods that aren't particularly great for skin. And I do want to first mention with when it comes to food, I don't think there's anything such such a thing as a bad food or a good food. It's just there are certain foods that tend to be triggers for certain skin issues.

42:28And there are other foods that are more just supportive for our bodies and for our skin. So no food shaming here, but there are certain powerhouse foods. When we think about skin, one of the most important nutrients or things that we want to get is antioxidants. Antioxidants help protect against free radical damage that is associated with free radical damage associated with accelerated aging, cancer. So we definitely want to get antioxidants in our food. We can also get antioxidants and skin care products too, but anything colorful fruits and vegetables, colorful berries, for example, can be great for getting those antioxidant.

43:11Another antioxidant I really like comes actually in wild salmon. Astaxanthin is a really powerful antioxidant that helps protect the skin from the inside out. And that pink color of salmon is one of the things that indicates that it has astaxanthin and shellfish also have astaxanthin and so these things can be really powerful for helping us with our skin also another thing that wild alaskan salmon would have is omega-3s we need these good fats for our skin and we we talk a lot about hydration when it comes to skin now how do you hydrate your skin but some of that hydration comes from the inside out and not just drinking water, but also getting healthy fats.

44:00Our skin really needs those beneficial fats, essential fatty acids. A lot of people end up with essential fatty acid deficiencies, which lead to dry skin, skin issues. And so getting those healthy fats is also really important.

44:14Shawn Stevenson:All right. So we've got antioxidants coming from berries. We've got wild salmon with astaxanthin omega-3s we've got healthy oils coming from olive oil and avocado oil is there anything else any other of your favorite beauty supported foods anything that's collagen rich or things that support our collagen are also going to be beneficial so bone broth gelatin, those are rich in collagen. And also anything that is rich in vitamin C is going to help support our collagen production naturally. I hope that you enjoyed that first segment. I've got so much more in store for you. Now, the last thing that Dr.

44:59Shawn Stevenson:Trevor Cates shared was that vitamin C has a powerful effect in helping to increase your collagen production naturally. This is so powerful, it cannot be overstated. And you're actually gonna hear even more about vitamin C from our next beauty and skin expert. But I wanted to share this study with you as well. A 2017 study published in the journal Nutrients states, quote, normal skin contains high concentrations of vitamin C, which supports stimulating collagen synthesis and assisting in antioxidant protection against UV-induced photo damage, unquote. Several other studies affirm that vitamin C helps to reduce skin irritations, sagging skin, and it's even a key element in what we refer to as brightening of the skin or having that, quote, healthy glow.

45:56Shawn Stevenson:Now, most people still don't know that the majority of vitamin C supplements on the market are made from genetically modified corn syrup and cornstarch. Now, does that sound like high integrity sources of nutrition to you? And that's why the only vitamin C supplement that I use is the Essential C Complex from Paleo Valley. It's made from real vitamin C rich superfoods with no binders, no fillers, and no unnecessary ingredients. And I've been utilizing it for years. And right now, if you go to paleovalley.com forward slash model, you're going to get 15 % off their phenomenal essential C formula, plus all of their other superfood supplements and snacks as well.

46:43Shawn Stevenson:Again, vitamin C is critical in our skin health and our health overall. So definitely pop over there and check them out. PaleoValley.com forward slash model. That's P-A-L-E-O-V-A-L-L-E-Y.com forward slash model for 15 % off. And next up in this healthy skin masterclass is the incredible Dr. Anthony Yoon. Known as America's holistic plastic surgeon, Anthony Yoon, MD, is a nationally recognized board certified plastic surgeon and best-selling author. He's the most followed plastic surgeon on social media. And what makes him unique is that he advocates for his followers and his patients to make smart lifestyle and mindset changes first before jumping into invasive procedures.

47:37Shawn Stevenson:And in this powerful segment, he's going to be sharing with you the five main factors that contribute to skin aging, why your diet is the most important factor in determining your skin health, how to take advantage of autophagy to improve the health of your skin, a simple yet effective skincare routine for anyone, and so much more. Enjoy this segment with the one and only Dr. Anthony Yoon.

48:07Dr. Anthony Youn:So 70 to 80 % of our skin is composed of collagen. Collagen is that part of your skin that cause your skin to feel tight, to feel thick, and to feel strong. And when we're younger, our skin has a lot of collagen. It's nice and tight and smooth. And the way I describe it, it's kind of like the logs of a log cabin. And when you're younger, that log cabin is new. The logs are strong. They're shiny. They're smooth. But as we get older, starting about in our mid to late 20s, we start losing about 1 % of the thickness of our collagen every year. Women, after menopause, that increases to upwards of 2 % a year.

48:38Dr. Anthony Youn:And that's why you see some women who are in their 60s and 70s and 80s who have tissue paper thin skin so thin that sometimes they get a scratch and it tears their skin. You don't see this as much in men because they don't go through that menopause process. And so really focusing on the collagen is a huge part of slowing down that aging process when you're looking at the skin and the external visible effects of overall aging. And where does that start with? Well, collagen is a large protein. And so in order for us to retain that collagen, slow that collagen degradation down, you want to definitely have enough protein in your diet.

49:14Dr. Anthony Youn:The way I look at overall aging of the skin is I focus on five main factors that really contribute to it. The first is going to be nutrient depletion. So once again, our food, that being a huge part of this, the foundation of that house is not as nutritious as it used to be. There was a study that looked from between 1950 and 1999 and found a significant reduction in the nutritional content quality of our food in six different nutrients. Specifically, three that stood out to me were vitamin C, iron, and protein. So nutrient depletion is a huge cause of aging of the skin. Second thing I mentioned just a minute ago was collagen degradation.

49:51Dr. Anthony Youn:That's also a big component of it. Diet can have a big impact on that. Third thing is inflammation, specifically chronic inflammation. Now there's a difference between acute inflammation and chronic inflammation. Acute inflammation can actually be very beneficial for us. You know, when you get a cut on your skin and your body creates acute inflammation on that cut to help heal it, that's actually a good thing. Cosmetic treatments, laser treatments, chemical peels, microneedling, those are all creating acute inflammation. And kind of like the whole concept of hormesis, the body reacts to acute inflammation or acute trauma by actually becoming stronger after it heals that.

50:30Dr. Anthony Youn:But chronic inflammation is a whole other story, and that is a big age of our skin. The fourth cause of aging of the skin that we focus on is going to be oxidation or free radicals. And then the fifth cause of that is going to be a buildup of cellular waste. And so by focusing on these different things, diet being a huge part of it, but once again, what you eat, when you eat, supplements, skincare products, and treatments, we can really target at all five of those to efficiently reverse that and allow our body to once again regenerate itself.

51:02Shawn Stevenson:So this just immediately made me think about just a basic skin scrub, right? And just it is something that creates inflammation temporarily, but your skin ends up looking so much healthier

51:14Dr. Anthony Youn:and brighter and all these things. So basically all of the skin rejuvenating treatments that are actually trying to tighten your skin are all based off of traumatizing your skin to a certain amount and by doing that essentially it's like you take those logs they're starting to fall apart and as those logs that the collagen heals itself it heals itself in a tighter fashion and so with lasers it does it using light energy or heat with chemical peels it does it using an acid with microneedling it does it using a physical poke or needle in poke into the skin and all of these will then cause a controlled trauma and your skin will rebound by actually looking and feeling more youthful.

51:56Dr. Anthony Youn:The problem is, is you have to be careful because if that trauma is too aggressive, then you get scarring and that you definitely do not want. And so it's, you know, it's the same thing when you're looking at hormesis, you know, if you are doing a cold plunge, then you can do that for a period of time. But if you're in it for too long, you could get really, you know, ill from that, you know, your body temperature can go to a level that can be very harmful for you. And so we look at in some ways at these cosmetic treatments the same way.

52:24Shawn Stevenson:You know, if you think about this, and this is tying back to the skin differences between men and women, you know, some women can have 20 different skincare products while their husband is like washing his balls with the soap that he's washing his face with, you know, the same thing. And it's just like his skin looks amazing after, you know, whatever, you know, in his 60s or whatever. and we're negating some of these other lifestyle factors because it's not just the topical thing and having great topical applications is important and this is what I want to ask you about before we switch gears and kind of talk a little bit more about the internal but alcohol-based skincare products like can you talk a little bit about that?

53:07Dr. Anthony Youn:Yeah so back in the I mean really up until recently a lot of us thought that using astringents alcohol-based toners and products like that were actually good for us one thing that we are finding we're kind of with the skin where we were with the gut maybe 20 years ago where we discovered that there's this thing called a gut microbiome and most traditional physicians kind of ignored that whereas the forward-leaning holistic you know practitioners were talking about it and now we know that the skin has the same thing we have a skin microbiome we have billions of bacteria that live on the surface of our skin, and those bacteria do exert some type of impact on the health of our skin.

53:46Dr. Anthony Youn:Now, we're very early in our knowledge of it. We don't know just how important they are. You know, we know with the gut microbiome, it has massive impacts on your overall body's health. I don't know that the skin microbiome is quite that important, but we do know that when you disrupt that skin microbiome, same thing can happen when you disrupt the gut microbiome. So using, let's say, a lot of alcohol where you're literally killing off, you're stripping away that healthy bacteria, you can have unhealthy bacteria that potentially can go in its place. And so it is really important. You know, one of the big things over the last few years that has been a trend with skincare has been preserving the skin barrier.

54:23Dr. Anthony Youn:And essentially meaning that you leave that gut bacteria or that probiotics, those beneficial microbiome, that bacteria on the surface of your skin, you leave it alone and let it kind of do its thing. And so trying less aggressive treatments overall and not stripping your skin of that microbiome is actually really important.

54:42Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. There's two things that are similar with the microbes in the gut and the skin. These microbes are producing compounds. This is one of the things we don't understand yet. Like what are they producing? But we know that it tends to have some kind of a protective effect. And the other part is having the protective effect, which is protecting our skin from pathogens. Things like certain things can make it through your skin and make you sick or cause an infection. And so if we're stripping away our protection haphazardly, and you just mentioned it, yeah, because I remember not that long ago using alcohol-based stuff, you know, myself trying to have healthier skin when I was like, you know, in college.

55:22Shawn Stevenson:And, you know, thankfully that has changed, but even more so thankfully for your work to like educate us on, it's more than just the topical thing. We've got to look at this from the inside out. And I want to ask you about this specifically, because you go into detail with all of the things you mentioned, but cellular waste jumped out in particular. So how do we support this kind of metabolic waste removal, so that our skin is getting clogged up and backed up?

55:51Dr. Anthony Youn:So to simplify it, essentially, is that what being alive, we have cells that will create waste products. And these waste products are organelles, their proteins, they may be discarded, used up kind of mitochondria. And this waste product can build up in our cells, especially like our skin cells. And when this cellular waste builds up, it causes our cells to essentially function less efficiently, as if you are older. And the way that our cells then clear out this intracellular waste is a process called autophagy. Autophagy means self-eating. You've brought it up on the podcast before. But essentially, it's self-eating.

56:27Dr. Anthony Youn:It's a recycling of these intracellular of this intracellular waste these intracellular proteins they're essentially gunking up the mechanism you recycle it for energy and then what happens is that the cells function more efficiently afterwards as if they're more youthful but the problem is is for autophagy to work for this intracellular recycling process to happen your body has to run out of energy essentially so that it looks to that intracellular waste for energy because if it's being fed energy constantly, it won't necessarily go into that process, that autophagy process, because it doesn't need it.

57:02Dr. Anthony Youn:Well, in our standard American diet and our standard American lifestyle, we are not used to not eating. You know, I mean, we are constantly snacking and eating all day in general. And so that does not allow that process of autophagy to occur. On top of that, we also know that as you get older, like so many things in life, autophagy slows down. Naturally, it slows down. And so it is definitely important for us as we get older to keep that in mind and to try to get that autophagy process going. And the way to do that, essentially, simply put, is to stop eating for a while. Okay, and so the easiest way to do it is to intermittent fast.

57:37Dr. Anthony Youn:If you start off, if you haven't done much of it before, just start off by doing a 12-hour fast. So maybe you stop eating at 8 p.m. and then you don't eat until 8 a.m. the next morning. If you can get yourself to it, try to do a 16-hour fast where you stop eating at 8 p.m. and then you don't eat again until the next day at about noon. Getting that 16-hour fast gives your body time for it to then use that intracellular waste products in that process of autophagy and to seriously turn back the clock on the inside with our cells. Now, one thing that we did in the book is that we've got a three-week jumpstart where we took people and we had them on a certain diet.

58:16Dr. Anthony Youn:We cleaned up their diet. We had them on certain supplements. We had them take and use certain skincare products. In week one, we had them basically just clean up their diet and then do the supplements and the skincare. Weeks two and three, we added two days each week of intermittent fasting where they stopped eating at 8 p.m. and then they didn't eat until noon the next day. And then what we did, which I haven't seen done before, is that when they started refeeding at noon the next day, for the rest of that day, they ate a diet that could promote autophagy. One thing that we have learned is that there are certain foods that can promote the autophagy process even though you're not fasting.

58:55Dr. Anthony Youn:And those foods are healthy fats, so omega-3 fatty acid-rich foods, so like cold water fish, like tuna, trout, salmon. And then foods that are filled with polyphenols. Polyphenol-rich foods are also great for autophagy. So now you're looking at bright and dark-colored berries, green leafy vegetables, darker-colored vegetables as well. And the idea is that you can hopefully continue that autophagy process for a total for a good 24 hours and not leave it at just that 16.

59:27Shawn Stevenson:So good. So good. And the polyphenols and a lot of these things have multifactorial benefit. Like the polyphenols are great for your gut and all the things. Oh, yeah. And, you know, this gut skin connection, I think more science is going to come out kind of fleshing that out. as you mentioned you know talking to a gastroenterologist like about your skin like you know fix the gut and also Hippocrates you know famously he didn't tell me personally you

59:52Dr. Anthony Youn:know but I mean we're old but we're not that old whenever we say these quotes I'm just like ah

59:57Shawn Stevenson:but you know his story that he said that all disease begins in the gut and in particular he was really renowned for treating skin issues and certain things weren't involved in his practice Part of it was fasting. And he also used something he called serum, which is whey protein, funny enough. But it was like a topical treatment as well. It's like, it's all these fascinating things. And you hear these things. And our system is supposed to be inspired by the father of modern medicine. But then we forget to take care of the gut. And so the polyphenols is huge. So if you could, for everybody, just kind of across the board, what are some of the recommendations as far as a skincare routine just some basic things that we could all do to have healthier younger fresher looking skin so one of the things that we did

1:00:47Dr. Anthony Youn:for the book is that we really simplified the skincare routine down because it is very confusing when you go to the store and like this product's better than botox this one is the latest you know best thing for your skin what do you do so we basically i put together a very simple skincare routine that anybody can do. And we found that it takes literally two minutes a day. And we tested people on it, people who weren't necessarily taking good care of their skin before, but they also weren't horribly aged or anything. And we put them on it for two months. And then we actually took before and after photos.

1:01:15Dr. Anthony Youn:And we asked people online, how much younger do they look? And it turns out that they looked an average of about five years younger. So we called it the two minutes, five years younger skincare routine. And it's very simple. Every morning, you cleanse your skin with a cleanser appropriate for your skin type. So if you've got oily skin, I recommend a foaming cleanser if you've got like drier or sensitive skin then a more milky or hydrating cleanser is better second step you apply an antioxidant serum i mentioned earlier one of the main ages of our skin is oxidation and free radicals antioxidants neutralize free radicals so so important to use a vitamin c or an antioxidant serum every morning to protect your skin and then i recommend if you're going to be out to wear sunscreen at least an spf 30 and we can talk about sunscreens in the future if you if you want that's all you have to do in the morning cleanser antioxidant serum sunscreen if you're going to be out in the evening cleanse your skin so important if you only wash your face once a day make sure it's in the evening because you got to get rid of that day's worth of dirt and dust and grime and pollution and if you wear makeup you want to get rid of that as well and then you want to apply an anti-aging cream the one that most dermatologists some plastic surgeons recommend, super easy to find, is a retinol.

1:02:28Dr. Anthony Youn:Retinol is a derivative of vitamin A. Prescription strength retinol is retin-A. Over-the-counter strength is retinol. Some people try to go for the retin-A. Retin-A has been very scientifically proven to improve wrinkles, to smooth the skin, to exfoliate the skin, to thicken the dermis of the skin, the deeper layers of the skin, and even reverse early pre-skin cancers. So it kind of does everything, but it's hard on your skin. And so the retinol is the over-the-counter version that most people can tolerate. And that's all you have to do at night. Cleanse your skin, apply retinol. If you've got dry skin and you want to add a moisturizer on top of that, feel free to do that.

1:03:06Dr. Anthony Youn:But a moisturizer does not reverse aging of the skin. It just is hydrating and makes it more comfortable. And then the final thing is once a week, if you have sensitive skin, two to three times a week, if you've got quote unquote normal skin, you want to exfoliate your skin. You can do that with a gentle scrub, or you can do that with, let's say an alpha hydroxy acid type of appeal. That's all you have to do. You know, simple steps. You can buy these products at your local drug store. Ideally, I always encourage people to buy clean beauty. So it's something that doesn't have added fragrances and additives that aren't necessary for that.

1:03:40Dr. Anthony Youn:But if you stick to that type of a skincare regimen, you're going to be way ahead of probably 90 % of people out there.

1:03:45Shawn Stevenson:I love that. And I love the little note about the exfoliation to not overdo it, you know, give your skin a chance to heal.

1:03:52Dr. Anthony Youn:It's like a little exercise, the hormetic stressor, allowing it to heal. Yes. If you are exfoliating your skin and you find that it's constantly irritated and red, you are overdoing it. Do less of that.

1:04:03Shawn Stevenson:Okay. You've mentioned a particular nutrient, which might be surprising for skin health a couple of times now, vitamin C. We tend to think about it in this like vanilla lens of like good for your immune system, but it's this powerful antioxidant it's one of those things that is required by your skin as well for general

1:04:24Dr. Anthony Youn:health and resilience yeah i mean honestly it goes back to you know our middle school and high school science classes where we were taught the importance of vitamin c and collagen and scurvy how there were these sailors that would go for these extended trips when they ran out of fresh fruits and vegetables they ran out of vitamin c and then they would get these sores in their mouth and on their skin because vitamin C is absolutely essential for collagen production. So on top of that, it also is a very powerful antioxidant. It's the easiest antioxidant to get, both by mouth as well as topically on the surface of your skin.

1:04:58Dr. Anthony Youn:But here's a little tip for the listeners. If you want to take that to the next level, if you add vitamin C and vitamin E together, there was a study that found that they are synergistic and you get an even better antioxidant protection if you use vitamin C and E combined.

1:05:14Shawn Stevenson:Yes. There's actually a study that I cited in one of my books looking at vitamin C and E improving sleep quality as well. In particular, reducing the symptoms of sleep apnea. Oh, interesting. Who knew? Very, very powerful. But again, when we look at these things in just one way, get tunnel vision with it, we miss out on real food, real nutrients are great for your whole body in many ways. Yeah, and they can make big changes.

1:05:39Dr. Anthony Youn:I think that people poo-poo it. I mean, I'm still a surgeon, and I know that there are certain things that you just have to have surgery for if you want to get there. You know, if you've lost 100 pounds and you've got skin hanging from your body, yeah, there's no food you're going to eat that's going to make it go away. There's no chemical peel that will do that. Unfortunately, the only option is surgery. But outside of, you know, kind of more extreme type cases, you know, most of these types of things we can really treat pretty effectively without going under the knife.

1:06:04Shawn Stevenson:we're living in the future right now you know and there are some really cool innovations that are non-invasive or minimally invasive like red light therapy can you talk a little bit about that what is your uh what is your perspective on that so interesting red light therapy is something

1:06:21Dr. Anthony Youn:where if you talk to a plastic surgeon they may look at you with a blank stare because we don't talk about it in plastic surgery at all dermatologists know know a decent amount of it and And then alternative health experts are all about red light therapy. So the idea behind red light therapy essentially is the energy from that red light will be infused into your cells. So for the skin, it would be your skin cells. And essentially what it does, your mitochondria takes up that energy and it powers the mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of your cells. And it causes a mitochondria, we believe, to increase its production of ATP.

1:06:53Dr. Anthony Youn:So essentially you are taking your cells and you're adding energy to them, making them more energetic and essentially more youthful. So red light therapy devices for the skin can occur in different types. There's handheld devices that are kind of a pain because you treat a quadrant of your face at a time usually. There are tabletop devices which are nice and square and you can treat the whole face at one time which is really convenient. There are creepy looking Hannibal Lecter type masks that you can wear around and scare your significant other while you wear it. And then there are whole red light therapy beds that some people use as well.

1:07:25Dr. Anthony Youn:So what does this science say about red light therapy? Basically, there are studies, split face studies, where they split the face in half and they treat one side of the face with a sham light and the other side of the face with red light and have found after about 90 days of treatment, an improvement in wrinkles, hydration, and skin elasticity. So it definitely works. We think it works once again by kind of adding energy to the mitochondria of our cells, although it's not 100 % been proven to my understanding. Good thing with red light therapy, no downtime. You know, if you want to start with something, that is a great place to start.

1:08:00Dr. Anthony Youn:Awesome.

1:08:00Shawn Stevenson:Awesome. Okay. A lot of our health has to do with not doing certain things. All right. Are there anything, let's talk just from the lens of nutrition, things that we might want to avoid that can be contributing to degradation of our health, accelerated aging, things like that?

1:08:22Dr. Anthony Youn:So I mentioned earlier that there are these five causes of the aging of the skin, nutrient depletion, collagen degradation, chronic inflammation, oxidation, and buildup of cellular waste. When you look at inflammation, the main cause of chronic inflammation of the skin is sugar. And so reducing the amount of sugar that you eat because sugar can actually bond to the collagen of your skin. And I mentioned earlier that our collagen, it's like the logs of a log cabin. And as we get older, those logs become frayed. They start to fall apart. What sugar will do is it will actually bond to the collagen fibers, the actual collagen.

1:08:55Dr. Anthony Youn:It will bond to it and cause that collagen to become permanently kinked. So it's not that tight log in a log cabin anymore. It's kinked that is prematurely aging to the skin. And so that process creates advanced glycation end products. That's the term for those collagen sugar hybrids, those connections. So sugar creates chronic inflammation. So reducing the amount of sugar, super important. I know you've been great with educating people on that. And then the other thing that we look at with oxidation, we talked about how antioxidants fight oxidation and are so healthy for our skin. But what does it fight?

1:09:32Dr. Anthony Youn:It fights free radicals. And where do free radicals come from? Well, free radicals are created by our body. Just being alive, our body's metabolism creates free radicals as a waste product. And these free radicals, when they are numerous, can actually damage the DNA of our cells, of our skin cells, let's say. And so antioxidants will neutralize free radicals. But if you have too many free radicals that are attacking your body, we don't have enough antioxidants to support that or to neutralize them. That's when you get DNA damage and you get premature aging. So where do you get free radicals from?

1:10:09Dr. Anthony Youn:Well, you can get them from pollution in the air. You can get it from, let's say, cigarette smoking, from automobile exhaust, but you can also get it from ultra-processed foods. So ultra-processed foods, especially if they are fried, like deep-fried foods, are filled with free radicals. And so reducing the amount of ultra-processed foods or even eliminating them is a great way to improve the health of your skin. So you're saying McDonald's french fries? As good as they may taste going down are quite possibly the worst food for your skin. Maybe not the worst because probably the worst would be if they smothered them in sugar.

1:10:47Dr. Anthony Youn:So yeah, I would say maybe a donut might be worse than the fries, but that's all the same idea, you know? And there are those foods that not only, you know, have sugar, but they also are ultra processed, you know, like dessert stuff that you buy, you know, that's packaged in boxes that you buy at the grocery store. Those could be potentially the worst.

1:11:06Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. I went to a carnival recently and they were literally deep frying everything. Yeah.

1:11:10Dr. Anthony Youn:Deep fried Snickers, deep fried Oreos. Have you seen the deep fried butter? There is deep fried butter out there that they sell. House way. Wow. Yes. That's something else. Deep fried sticks of butter. All right. It's probably not grass fed butter. I doubt. Right.

1:11:28Shawn Stevenson:I want to ask you about this because, you know, this you said this term several times is super important. Again, it's the majority of what we're seeing when we see our skin in the mirror and with collagen. There are a lot of different collagen products on the market now, and there's some controversy around that. Let's talk a little bit about that.

1:11:45Dr. Anthony Youn:So yeah, I mean, it's funny, because I will post occasionally on social media about collagen supplements, and invariably, I get a ton of comments of, I asked my family doctor about collagen supplements, and he said that that doesn't work. There actually is a doctor that I respect online. He is a weight loss surgeon, and he's got a big bushy beard and he talks with a lot of authority when he speaks. He's probably in his 60s and he seems very well read and all that. And he made a video a couple years ago about collagen supplements and saying, you know, basically collagen supplements don't work. If you really want to take collagen supplements, save your money and buy jello gelatin.

1:12:21Dr. Anthony Youn:It's the same thing. And I thought, oh, geez. But the funny thing, Sean, is that just a few weeks ago, he made a new video and he's watching the old video about collagen. He swipes it away and he goes, you know, some of us physicians, we make decisions and we have opinions based off of the available evidence at that time. And the available evidence is now telling me that collagen supplements do work. I was wrong. And I thought, oh my gosh, here is a doctor who's in his probably 60s, who speaks with such authority and he's so sure of his opinion and he says it's wrong. So what does the science say about collagen supplements?

1:13:00You know, we take collagen

1:13:01Dr. Anthony Youn:supplements, people take it for the health of their hair, their skin, their nails, their bones, that's type one collagen. The science, basically, the studies look at it are all pretty conclusive. I mean, people may say that they're not, but if you actually look at the studies, there are so many studies to support the use of collagen supplements. So for example, there was a meta analysis in 2021. They looked at over 1 ,100 people taking 90 days of a hydrolyzed collagen supplement and found after 90 days a statistically significant improvement in wrinkles and hydration and elasticity of the skin.

1:13:34Dr. Anthony Youn:That's over 1 ,100 people. There have been prospective randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials that have been performed where people take, let's say, 90 days or two months of collagen peptide supplements, hydrolyzed collagen, and have found after they actually biopsy their skin that there is an increased amount of collagen in that skin biopsy. So there is a ton of research to support the use of collagen and it improving the skin, hence that doctor going back and saying, look, I was wrong. I think in the end, with collagen supplements, there are a lot of people out there who are just anti-supplement, period.

1:14:09Dr. Anthony Youn:And the way I describe it, it's people who don't know what they don't know. And I've been at that point. You know, when I was early on in my career and I was a very traditional plastic surgeon, I didn't know what I didn't know. And then I realized that there was a lot I didn't know, and I needed to learn that. And so that's kind of how I look at it with collagen. I think the important thing, if you're going to try a collagen supplement, a couple of things. First thing, make sure it's hydrolyzed collagen peptides. Collagen is a huge protein. And the argument is that how do you know, number one, that your body will actually, that your GI tract will absorb the collagen protein because it's so huge, and how do you know it's going to get to your skin?

1:14:46Dr. Anthony Youn:Well, we know it gets to the skin by those studies I've mentioned to you. But we also know that good collagen companies that produce these supplements will break that large protein down into individual amino acids and peptides. And that process is called hydrolysis. It basically hydrolyzes the collagen, makes it much smaller. So that's what you want to look for. And then the second thing is that there are five types of collagen out there, okay? Type 1 is hair, skin, nails, and bone. Type 2 is joints. Type 3 is muscle. Type 4 is in the kidneys. And type 5 is placenta. So 4 and 5 we don't really pay much attention to.

1:15:20Dr. Anthony Youn:But let's say if you've got joint issues, you don't want to take a beauty collagen that only contains collagen type one because that's not going to help the cartilage. If you've got hair issues, you don't want to take one that's just type two because that doesn't have the right collagen. So you really want to make sure that it has the right type of collagen for what you're looking for.

1:15:37Shawn Stevenson:I hope that you enjoyed that segment with the amazing Dr. Anthony Yoon. And if you love to hear the full interviews with both of these amazing physicians and researchers will have those for you in the show notes. But what I wanted to do again was to put together a masterclass focused specifically on skin health. Hopefully, you've got some practical tips that you could implement for yourself starting right now. Listen, we have got some amazing, amazing shows in store for you, some mind-blowing guests, and some powerful masterclasses that you're not gonna wanna miss. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.

1:16:23Shawn Stevenson:And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome. And I appreciate that so much. and take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.